Highlights from this week’s National Energy Board hearings in Bella Bella on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and supertankers on BC’s coast. Powerful testimony from three members of the Heiltsuk First Nation, sharing their experiences with the sea. “I’ll never forget it,” said Josh Vickers recounting to the NEB panel a memorable herring fishing trip as a boy. “We were coming back in 40 to 50 foot seas…Our boats were like corks going way up and way down. We couldn’t even see each other – that’s how violent and rough the sea was.”
Soon enough the Harper Government will be launching attack ads against the Pacific Ocean. Probably blaming it for pearl harbour or the exxon valdez. I bet you pudgy little stevie can’t even get in the shallow end without his water wings.
What a lovely sentiment of the F.N. People
Enbridge has had 604 pipeline spills, within the last 10 years. In BC, there are mudslides, rock slides, avalanches, earthquakes, and swift running, flooded rivers, that carry away highways and houses. How do they get through 15 feet of snow, to get to the pipe burst? Will Enbridge even bother to clean up their disaster. They certainly didn’t clean up, their Kalamazoo river spill. They just had another pipe spill, 10 miles away from the Kalamazoo River disaster.
?There recently were, three freighters, caught in one of the Norther, Coast of BC’s, terrible storms. One freighter had the top load of their logs torn off, by the storm. The ship pit in a distress call. They were afraid, if the bottom load of logs shifted, the ship would capsize. It took rescue many hours, to reach the stricken ship. The other two freighters also lost their cargo to the storm. The three ships all had to turn back, to BC harbors. They said there were rogue waves 70 to 80 feet high.
The channel narrow, the ships massive that have to make hairpin turns. This is one of the most treacherous seas, in the entire world.
Beautiful and heartfelt testimony.